After five days in Hong Kong, it was on to Bangkok, Thailand.

What a city! 10 million people! Picture a city that size anywhere and you’ve got it.  Skyscrapers, shopping malls, incredible traffic congestion and resultant pollution so thick you can almost cut it. But as these photos show, it’s also a city unlike any other. Being situated in a river delta emptying into the Gulf of Siam, Bangkok is laced with canals, many of which are bordered by homes only inches above water level – and that’s not in monsoon season!

Other striking features include a pervasive reverence for the King, and traffic congestion that’s truly momentous.  Hopefully the brand new elevated mass transit train system, opened on the King’s birthday in early December ‘99, will help ease that problem.

Regarding Bangkok’s oft-mentioned "other" noteworthy feature. Well, all I can tell you is that for the single male intent on preserving his honour (or at least his health), the challenges are formidable!

I wish I could share with you all of my photographs of Bangkok.  Suffice it to say I’d return in a flash given the opportunity.  And I’d love to return to explore the rest of Thailand– I thoroughly enjoyed what I saw of it in and around Bangkok and Koh ("the island of") Samui.